Sabrina took a deep breath, tried to put herself back in that house in Billings. What caused outages beyond equipment failure? Animals, storms, limbs.
“Maybe we could throw a limb up on the fence?”
“Did you see any limbs out there?”
“No.” Sabrina also wasn’t sure that the system wouldn’t just blow the limb clear, achieving nothing. The fault had to be one that lasted. What was bad, beyond equipment failure? Or, maybe a better question, what caused equipment failure?
She closed her eyes, remembering that warm, wonderful night in their first home together, Jay’s fingertip tracing over her skin as he talked.
If two energized lines touch, say good night for a while. The system does not like that.
Okay. Line-to-line contact. But how did you make one of those copper wires touch another without getting shocked yourself? She hadn’t seen any insulated electrician’s gloves lying around. Again, the idea of throwing something onto the wires was possible, but whatever you threw would have to bridge the lines and be conductive, able to transmit electricity between the two. Water or a piece of metal or…
Sabrina lifted her left hand, her shackles jingling.
“How long is this chain?”
“What?”
“Three feet, maybe?”
“At least. Could be four. Long enough to let us stretch out and lie down. At least three.”
Sabrina nodded. She mimed a tossing motion with her right hand, like pitching horseshoes.
She said, “I think I could do it.”
“Do what?”
“Use our shackles to kill that fence. The live wires are bare, not insulated. They aren’t spaced that far apart either. If I could toss these up there and get them to hook, we’d have line-to-line contact. That’ll make things go dark in a hurry.”
Lynn was watching her with fascination. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“And you think you could make that toss? Because I doubt we’d have much time, and if it goes wrong, I don’t want you electrocuting yourself.”
“I don’t want that either.” She mimed the toss once more, then nodded. “I could do it. Tailgating experience.”
“Pardon?”
“Horseshoes, beanbag toss, even darts. I always won those. I’m a tailgating champ.” She had started to laugh, and not in a healthy way.
“This won’t be a game,” Lynn said, staring at Sabrina as if her sanity were slipping away. That was probably what it looked like, Sabrina realized, yet she couldn’t stop laughing. Tailgating. That had been her life once, and not that long ago. Montana Grizzlies home games, loud music, beer in red Solo cups—that had been real? It couldn’t have been real. She’d been born in shackles, hadn’t she?
Lynn said, “You need to—” but Sabrina cut her off.
“It won’t be a game,” she said. The tears that had come to her eyes with the laughter were leaking down her cheeks now, and the laugh was gone. “I’ll make it. If I get a chance, then I will make it. I can only control the second part.”
“It would be best to do it in the dark, I think. When they’d have more trouble finding us.”
“Yes.”
“But we might not get to call that shot. They’ve got big plans for the day.”
“It seems that way.”
“So…are we agreed? Next time out, we try this?”
Sabrina’s throat tightened and her stomach growled around cold acid. She couldn’t conjure so much as a smile, let alone the wild laughter she’d just displayed. Her tears cooled and dried on her cheeks.
“Next time out,” she said. It was supposed to be firm; it came out in a whisper.
“All right. We’ll have to deal with Violet in here, though. She’s taking us to the bathroom one at a time and locking doors behind her. Any attempt to come back will slow us down too much. When this happens, it has to happen fast.”
“Right.” Sabrina worked her tongue around her mouth, which had gone very dry.
“I’ll take Violet, and I’ll trust you with the fence. Sound right?” Lynn asked.
Sabrina just nodded. The thought of the attempt had stolen her voice. She was thinking of the chicken with the ruptured eye.
There are only two relevant parties now, Eli Pate had told her. People and power. Who has power, and who deserves it.
53
They stole an F-150 from the parking lot of a bar on the outskirts of Byron. The windows were open a crack, leaving it easy to get into, but it had been near the side of the building, not thirty feet from the door, and Mark was reluctant to try it.
“Somebody in there hears something, we’re going to end up with a shitstorm on our hands, Uncle. And this is Wyoming—ten-to-one odds that everybody inside that place is packing.”
“You’re probably right,” Larry said. “So I’d suggest we hurry with it.”
It took Larry less than three minutes, and he didn’t make much of a sound until the engine turned over.
“Do I want to ask why you’re in such good practice?” Mark said.
“Just get in the damn truck. Remember, I was asleep in my own bed when you showed up this morning.”
This morning. It seemed impossible that this was still the same day.
Mark climbed in the passenger seat, and they drove away from the bar and toward town.
“Pretty nice ride,” Larry said. He had the window down and his arm resting on the door, relaxed as could be, no indication that he’d just stolen the truck.
“Isn’t it neat how these modern ones can shift gears all by themselves?” Mark said. “I’ve heard the brakes even work without a rosary.”
“You were more respectful when you were a kid.”
They drove west, out of town. Mark was thinking of Lauren and Sabrina Baldwin, of Jay asking him what he’d have done for a second chance, when Larry threw the truck into a hard left turn.
“Whoa, here we go,” Larry called. They’d been traveling at a good speed, and the truck fishtailed briefly but Larry straightened it out and they bounced along a gravel road that led away from the highway and toward the Shoshone River. A few miles later, the road curled out of the gulch and toward the river and Mark saw an RV parked beside a copse of scrub pines. It was a large, expensive model, at least forty feet long, black and gold, though the paint was covered by a thick layer of dust.
“Is that Scott Shields’s?” Mark asked.
“Yes.”
“Doesn’t seem like he made it to Alaska.”
“Nope.” Larry cut the engine, and Mark saw that his gun was already in his hand. “And that gives me more than a few questions for him.”
They got out of the truck. The sun was high in a cloudless sky and between that and the lingering dust from the truck’s rattling ride, the place felt desertlike despite the pines. There were still patches of snow in all directions and yet the day had been sunburn-bright and plenty warm. Springtime in the Rockies.
Everything was still as a portrait. Mark could hear Larry’s breathing. He stood stock-still, like a dog smelling the air, hackles up.
“There’s a bad feel here,” Larry said, and then he walked up to the door and knocked. “Scotty? Scotty?”
No answer. Also no vehicle beside the motor home, although hard-packed ruts made it clear that there was usually a truck there. Mark was just about to ask where Shields might be found in town when he saw the blood.
“Uncle.”
Larry turned to him, and Mark pointed. Neither of them said a word as they followed the blood trail. It led from the tire tracks all the way to the front door.
Larry took his ball cap off, pushed his long hair back over his ears, put the cap back on, and bent the bill. He was bowstring-tense.
“Give me cover just in case,” he said.
“No. I’ll go in first,” Mark said, but Larry ignored him and walked to the RV with a brisk stride. Mark was expecting him to at least try the door. Instead, he simply raised his boot and kicked it. The door held for the fir
st kick and snapped open on the second, and Larry reeled back like he’d taken gunfire. Mark was just behind him in a shooter’s stance, but he couldn’t see anything.
“What’s wrong?” he said a second before the answer arrived to Mark on the windless air.
The smell of death wafted out, pungent and nauseating. Larry gagged and spit into the dirt.
“Hang on,” Larry said. He went to the truck and found two rags and splashed a small amount of motor oil on them. He brought the rags back along with two pairs of weathered canvas work gloves. His eyes were grim. “Let’s have a look,” he said, and then he put the gloves on and held the oil-soaked rag to his nose.
Mark followed. Mark took the gloves and the rag, and they walked through the dust and up the steps of the RV. Even against the oil, the smell was strong.
The steps led into a small living-room area with a built-in sofa, empty. To the right of that was a booth and a table, also empty, and then the driver’s cab. The inside of the RV had the feel of the Mary Celeste, an abandoned ghost ship.
Except for that smell, and the streaks of blood along the floor.
Mark followed the streaks to an accordion door like those in airplane bathrooms. The door folded inward, and now the smell’s source had shape. There was a dead man sprawled on the bed.
Mark couldn’t see evidence of a killing wound until he took one step closer to the body, his stomach roiling, and saw a neat hole where each of the dead man’s eyes belonged. Mark could look straight down through tunnels of black blood that carved through the brain and out of the skull and into the mattress below. Twin shots in the eyes. A .22, probably, held right up against the eye sockets.
“This is him?” Mark said. “Scott Shields?”
“That’s him. Let’s get out of here.”
Larry stumbled away from the bedroom and out of the RV and there were retching sounds from outside. Mark lingered inside, looking down into those empty eyes. Then he backed out of the bedroom, closed the door on the corpse of Scott Shields, and left the RV. The main door would no longer latch. Tonight, if the body wasn’t moved, the animals that had been kept at bay would finally have a chance to feast.
Larry was all the way back by the truck, braced against the hood, spitting into the dirt. Mark walked up beside him and looked down the empty road. This time of year, caught between snowmobiling season and fishing season, there wouldn’t have been many people passing by the RV.
“Who told you he was in Alaska?” Mark said.
“He did. He said he was headed out.”
“So was he stopped from leaving, or was he lying to you?”
Larry frowned. “Scotty was a straight shooter with me.”
“Did he know what happened when you tried to get Mom away from Pate?”
“Yeah, he knew.”
“All right. Would he have lied to you to keep you out of the fire?”
“You’re thinking that he wasn’t through with Pate?”
“I’m asking.”
Mark glanced back at the RV. “Strange place to leave him. That body could have been scattered all over these mountains by coyotes and bears by now.”
“Pate left him there for a reason.”
“What do you think that is?”
Larry turned and looked Mark squarely in the face. “So we could see the bones of those who came before us,” he said.
For a moment neither of them spoke. A haze of dust rose in the distance, back toward the main road, but then it passed as the vehicle vanished in another direction. Mark checked his cell phone. He had a faint signal. They were standing at a murder scene and he had a cell signal. You called it in, that’s what you did. That was the right thing, the only thing.
He pocketed the phone.
“We could go back to Cantu and try again,” Mark said. “Let him know that we were unimpressed.”
“You’re unimpressed?” Larry said, wide-eyed.
“That we were not helped, at least. We’re no closer to Pate.”
“Cantu isn’t going to talk much more than he already has.”
“Not even with encouragement?”
“If you’re prepared to go back there and take a hammer to the man’s fingers and toes, pliers to his teeth, a drill bit to his kneecaps, he might talk. Might. Otherwise, he’s said all he intends to say. My gut tells me that whatever fear we put into Sal won’t be greater than the fear that already lives in him courtesy of Eli Pate.”
Mark looked away, back at the RV. He was silent for a few seconds, then said, “What’s this guy’s role? Shields. He got crossways with Pate and he got killed, that’s clear enough. But what was Pate’s problem with him?”
“Your mother.”
“What does Mom have that Pate could benefit from—and I don’t need to hear any remarks about the obvious. Cantu himself said that didn’t matter to Pate.”
“Son, your mother doesn’t have anything. Never did. You know that. She doesn’t have a dime to her name.”
Mark pointed at the RV where the dead man lay. “But he did.”
“Scott had some money, sure, but not that much. Not killing money.”
“Uncle, you know better than me that to the wrong man at the wrong time, ten damn dollars can turn into killing money.”
“Not to Pate. He’s just not that sort, not impulsive. If Eli killed Scotty, it wasn’t a cash grab—and by the time this happened, Scotty wouldn’t have had any cash left to grab, anyhow. What he did have he’d put into the hunting camp. And even that was risky. I knew that from the start. All he had was the land—no lodge, no equipment; hell, no good way to get there, even.”
“The property is that hard to access?”
“Bet your ass it’s hard to access. ATV or a horse. Maybe a tricked-out Jeep. Scotty was going to run horses for the hunting trips, the way he had up in Alaska.”
“And Pate knew this place.”
“Yeah.”
“And now your friend Shields is dead, but it’s a surprise to you.”
“Only a surprise because—”
“You weren’t looking for him,” Mark finished. “He saw to that. We could consider that a coincidence, I suppose.”
“But you don’t believe it.”
“I think it’s a stretch.”
Larry shook his head but didn’t say anything. He was unconvinced, but he was also wondering now.
“When you talked to Shields and Pate,” Mark said, “did they ever mention the word Wardenclyffe to you?”
Larry frowned. “No. What’s that mean?”
“I think it’s a place. I know people were looking for it.”
“Never heard of it.”
Mark looked again from Larry over to the RV, then up at saw-toothed mountaintops. The sun was angling down, unfiltered by cloud, burning the snowcap off the peaks.
“How far away is the hunting camp?”
“The drive isn’t all that bad, but it’s hiking once you get there, and there’s nothing up there but woods and rocks and wind.”
“When was the last time you saw the place?”
“Maybe seven months back.”
“Okay. So who knows what’s out at this rough property now? Pate has to be somewhere, Uncle. And he’s not alone anymore. He’s off the grid, and he needs to be hidden. The land sounds pretty good for hiding.”
“It’s surely that,” Larry admitted.
“I want to take a look,” Mark said. “If Pate’s not impulsive, as you say, then he killed Shields with a purpose. Maybe the purpose was to keep him away from his own land.”
Larry gestured at the RV. “What about this?”
“He’s sat this long. He can sit longer. Same goes for Sal, in my opinion.”
A ghost of a smile crossed Larry’s face. “Yes.”
They got into the truck and Larry fired up the engine. The smile was gone and his eyes were sorrowful as he studied the RV before putting the truck in gear.
“He was a good man,” Larry said, “and he was a hard man. That�
��s what worries me, Markus. Scott Shields was nobody’s pushover. When you see a hard man left like that…”
He didn’t finish, and he didn’t need to. He’d already said it before, when he’d finished vomiting out the smell of his dead friend into the dust.
The bones of those who came before us.
54
She sent the e-mails from the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant at an interstate stop in southern Wyoming. She hated not to be in motion, but Doug Oriel had some heavy lifting left to do.
Wording was key, and it took her a while to get it just right. She read it five times through, tweaking here and there, before she finally sent the message. Then she copied the text, pasted it into a fresh message, and sent it again. There were nine groups in all, ranging in size from five members to twenty-seven, reaching a total of more than two hundred heavily armed and deeply paranoid white men scattered across four states. Most were in Florida and Georgia, but there was a Texas contingent as well.
The note needed to convey the proper emotion, so she kept it terse, as close to panicked as possible.
Have any of you heard from Doug? I received a short phone call from him late in the afternoon. Police raided his house in Florida two days ago. All of his guns are gone. Confiscated. The house itself was burned. This was in Cassadaga. He told me the police will claim he murdered a woman there. He said he would not be surprised if he is implicated in another crime for every day that he stays free. He’s afraid they have all of his contacts under surveillance. That is why I am warning you. I’m destroying this computer as soon as I send this message. You should do the same. Doug believes there is something big coming. I don’t know what. He was scared, and not making much sense. Has anyone heard anything? Rumors, threats? I am afraid to be online, afraid that they will track me, if they aren’t already. There is no news about him yet, but the house fire is real. Just search for Cassadaga and fire. You’ll see it. There is also NO MENTION OF ANY GUNS BEING CONFISCATED. So they are already lying. I don’t know what to do, but I won’t use a computer or a phone. Not after what he told me. I don’t know if he is still free or if they have him. I don’t know what the “something big” means. I don’t know ANYTHING except that the police have decided to move against Doug and when this ends he will be in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and we all may be next. Everyone do what you feel is best…but be prepared for the worst. Doug thought he was, and look what happened to him.
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